What must go on the website now

The list added by HB 913 and its 2024 predecessor is broader than many mid-size associations realise. Alongside the declaration, bylaws, articles, rules, contracts and bid lists, it includes:

• “the approved minutes of all board of administration meetings over the preceding 12 months”;
• “the video recording or a hyperlink to the video recording for all meetings of the association, the board of administration, any committee, and the unit owners which are conducted by video conference over the preceding 12 months”; and
• a copy of all affidavits required by Chapter 718.

Bid summaries over $500 must be maintained on the site. Homeowners' association thresholds are unchanged — s. 720.303(4)(b) still applies at 100 or more parcels.

Note how the pieces interact. Affidavits are signed documents and they are now both official records and posting-required. The SIRS receipt affidavit, the financial-report delivery affidavit and the electronic-ballot review affidavit all carry signatures, and all are now in scope.

The records categories that expanded in 2025

HB 913 added three categories to s. 718.111(12) that are best read as discoverable:

• “Electronic records that contain the minutes of all meetings of the association, the board of administration, any committee, and the unit owners, and a recording of all such meetings that are conducted by video conference” — retained at least one year after posting where approved minutes exist;
• “All bank statements and ledgers of the association”; and
• a copy of all affidavits required under Chapter 718.

Bank statements and ledgers becoming official records is a significant expansion of owner inspection rights, and it arrived with much less attention than it deserved.

The same act raised the intent standard for the records offences — denial of access, defacing or destroying accounting records, refusing to produce records to avoid detection — to willfully and knowingly or intentionally.

What a board can do about the signature question specifically

The practical answer is not to fight it but to change what gets signed where. If the concern is that a specimen signature posted publicly can be misused, the response is to manage the document, not to redact after the fact:

• Post approved minutes in the form the board approves them, and keep the execution copy in the records rather than making the signature block part of the posted document where the statute does not require it.
• Where a document must be posted and does carry signatures, post it intact. The Division has now said the alternative is unauthorised.
• Review what else is being redacted by habit. The redaction list is closed; if counsel cannot point to the paragraph of s. 718.111(12)(c) that authorises a particular withholding, the Division's reasoning says it is not authorised.

What a declaratory statement is, and what it is not

Worth understanding, because the Division has been unusually clear this year about the limits of the tool. A declaratory statement gives a prospective interpretation of a Division-administered statute applied to the petitioner's own facts. It is not a way to have a board declared wrong.

The Division has been declining petitions on exactly that ground. It told one petitioner the request “concerns past conduct and seeks the imposition of potential sanctions” and that “the Division does not have authority to dispose of contested allegations of misconduct.” It told another that the request “impermissibly seeks an interpretation of statutory provisions that would constitute the adoption of an unpromulgated rule” and required construing Chapter 605, “which is beyond the Division's jurisdiction.” A July 2026 petition asking whether an association had properly withheld litigation documents under the same paragraph at issue here was declined as exceeding “the proper scope of a declaratory statement under section 120.565, F.S.”³

So the way to get an answer is to ask a forward-looking question about what the statute requires — which is what Antigua II did.

A research note worth having

If you are looking for the Division's current positions, do not rely on its own website. The Division's published declaratory-statements page lists nothing after DS 2023-011, and its archives page runs 1990 to 2021. Meanwhile the Florida Administrative Register recorded 55 declaratory-statement notices for the Division in the twelve months to 9 September 2026, with numbers running to DS 2025-061.

Practitioners relying on the agency site are missing roughly three years of interpretation. The Register, searched by organisation, is the reliable index.

What to watch next

The Register publishes a summary; the full order is obtainable from the Division Clerk, and anyone relying on this holding in a dispute should get it. Watch too for whether the reasoning — closed redaction list, nothing withheld unless named — is applied to other categories in future statements. Records access is the largest single subject in the Division's declaratory-statement docket.